Paper vs Electronic Medical Records

Posted On September 19, 2015

Have you ever gone to a doctor’s appointment and found yourself detailing your health condition while your doctor scribbles on a piece of paper? What about a doctor’s appointment where you’re detailing your health condition while the doctor types on a computer? Those two different scenarios involve medical records, but with one difference- one type is considered paper medical records while the other are considered electronic medical records.

Paper records require additional personnel to handle and support paper files and to organize countless documents. An electronic medical record platform requires less personnel, time and no physical storage space.

Although physicians may experience some initial costs as they implement electronic medical records, the costs of records over time will decrease significantly.

Medical practices store paper medical records in large warehouses that are filled with paper. These paper records take up space and are less environmentally friendly, paper records also tend to deteriorate over time. Electronic medical records can be stored in the cloud allowing the use of fewer resources.

Many medical professionals just keep one copy of a medical record on paper, the loss of a single record could mean that it’s gone forever. Not to mention paper records are also vulnerable from break in, losing it from a staff member or from a natural disaster such as a fire or flood.

For the physicians who keep medical records in a warehouse, they need to request them to be faxed, scanned or mailed which is a time-consuming process. With electronic medical records, medical professionals have access to the data they need instantly. Time is critical in medical settings.

Everyone has different hand writing, paper medical records also are sometimes is illegible penmanship. Also paper has limited space so sometimes medical professionals don’t have enough room on paper to write everything down. Electronic medical records give you the space you need to write what is needed to document a patient encounter.

Daniel drives direction, brand vision, and business strategy for drchrono. Daniel’s focus has been in the technology space since 2001, as a software engineer and entrepreneur. Daniel holds an M.S. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Computer Science & Psychology from Stony Brook University.

I think that very soon healthcare industry will understand that EHR should be a standard. At this point, companies which develop custom EHR systems should follow the standards so that their solutions could be easily adopted.

Problem is, these EHRs are a gold mine for identity thieves and data breachers everywhere. Numerous hospitals have been successfully attacked by ransomware and at least one giant health insurer has been breached, losing millions of patient records. HIPAA is no deterrent to criminals or spies.

I’m trying to find a doc who is opting out. Doubt I’ll be successful, alas.

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In this post https://mobidev.biz/blog/how_we_ensure_hipaa_compliance_of_your_website I have found comprehensive explanation on the question. The whole process doesn’t look too difficult, however, requires additional resources and expenses.

Got here is a search for HIPAA requirement for EHR/EMR. It is still not clear to me that HIPAA does require electronic records. The advantages are clear, but there are holdouts that believe their simple paper records are more secure. As an IT analyst I might just agree.

An equipment seller sent me to a state agency to convince a holdout to computerize. Told me it was a requirement. I still don’t see it, and was upset when I found I was being lied to. If you have confidential records that are never shared outside the building, there is no HIPAA requirement for EMR/EHR that I can see.

Every physician I know hates EHR and are on their 3rd or 4th company, costing tens of thousands of dollars for each, not counting the software companies holding the data hostage and charging exorbitant amounts to free YOUR data to send to the next company.

Docs are now data entry clerks and often using templates that don’t accurately document what the patient’s condition was.

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